[TWIAR] Putting public safety units on same wavelength

Sun, 20 Jan 2002 15:59:29 -0500

Interesting things out in California...
Greg Williams

No trees were destroyed in the sending of this contaminant-free message
We do concede, a significant number of electrons may have been
inconvenienced.

Jan. 17, 2002

Technology will put public safety units on same wavelength
BY CHUCK CARROLL
San Jose Mercury News

Even in tech-savvy Santa Clara County, police, fire and emergency medical
personnel can't radio one another at the scene of a major disaster because
each agency is on a separate frequency, wasting precious minutes and
endangering lives.

But that will change this summer, when officials expect to begin rolling
out a device developed a decade ago for intelligence and military uses.

Santa Clara County, along with the Washington, D.C., region, is leading the
country in using this technology to solve the communications problem --
which federal officials said they hope will be significantly reduced within
five years.

In typical Silicon Valley tradition, innovative local police techies
figured out how to use the ``cross-band wireless voice switch'' in everyday
operations and to handle data in real time, and not merely to improve voice
communications at the scene of a disaster, as originally conceived by the
vendor.

The system will allow the 18 participating jurisdictions in the county to
talk to one another instantly -- and without having to trash the existing
network of radios, phones, transmitters, repeaters and other equipment and
start over from the ground up, as other locales are doing.

Originally, officials thought they would have to design and build the
system from scratch, which would have cost millions.

The first phase, which will allow public safety agencies to seamlessly
handle up to four incidents anywhere in the county simultaneously, should
be online by summer. The second phase, a series of regional hubs that will
link the agencies for everyday uses, should be up and running by year's
end, if all goes as planned.

The second phase would allow officers involved in a car chase, for example,
to talk directly to cops in the neighboring town as the suspect approached
the second town, without having to switch channels or go through dispatch
centers.

`Radio interoperability'

The lack of ``radio interoperability'' has plagued emergency response
efforts everywhere for years, but it came to the fore in the wake of the
Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School shootings and the Oakland
hills fire. It's especially acute in the Bay Area, where so many
jurisdictions are close to one another that there isn't enough bandwidth to
go around.

Painful lesson

New urgency infused the public safety community after Sept. 11, when New
York officials were largely unable to get evacuation orders out to people
inside the second tower of the World Trade Center after the first tower
collapsed.

``The ability to immediately get new information about the event to
everybody on the scene at the same time is critical,'' said Bill
Weisgerber, chief of police in Milpitas and a member of the Santa Clara
County task force that's been working on the problem for three years.

Like Virginia and Maryland, California is also making plans for a seamless
statewide radio link. But the California system is expected to cost $2.5
billion over the next 15 years, said state interoperability program manager
Scoop Sairanen.

How the county stumbled upon the solution is an interesting story in itself.

The task force was put together about three years ago by the city managers
and police and fire chiefs in the county. They scraped together enough
money to hire a consultant, who helped them sketch out the issues and
goals. From there, they expected to have to design and build the system
from scratch, and probably to have to scrap virtually every piece of
equipment currently in use. They expected to have to borrow at least $20
million to get the job done -- in several years.

But in August, task force co-leader Sheryl Cantois of the Palo Alto Police
Department was at a convention in Salt Lake City when she heard that JPS
Communications of Raleigh, N.C., claimed to have an off-the-shelf solution.
At first she was skeptical, but then saw a product demonstration.

It was almost too good to be true. It could not only do everything the
county wanted but also at a fraction of the anticipated cost and be online
far sooner.

Need to act now

``The clock's ticking, and it's only a matter of time,'' Cantois said,
before the county has an incident that will require a multiagency response
in which smooth communications might save lives.

The consultant was let go, and the money will be used to deploy phase one
if no grant can be secured. If a grant pays for phase one, the money could
be used to set up phase two.

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